


Present Perfect

by leiascully



Category: House M.D.
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-05-15
Updated: 2007-05-15
Packaged: 2017-10-03 06:17:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He could always stay.  His choice.  Her choice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Present Perfect

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: So much for smut. Happy Tuesday anyway! I realized post facto that it was probably [**pwcorgigirl**](http://pwcorgigirl.livejournal.com/)'s (far superior) [A Tale Told By The Senses](http://pwcorgigirl.livejournal.com/101006.html) that inspired this. That and my [House shirt](http://picasaweb.google.com/parkerma/EgoAmo/photo#5063783853765014162) (portrait of the writer as a young layabout). Many apologies to **Corgigirl** for producing a pale shade of her delicious fic, and to the rest of you for taking liberties with my English major.  
> Disclaimer: _House M.D._ and all related characters are the property of Shore Z, Bad Hat Harry, and Fox. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

She sleeps with such abandon that he almost doesn't recognize her, her arm flung across his chest, pinning him to her bed. He could move if he wanted, but it's peaceful. It's been a long time since anyone cared enough that they wanted him even in their sleep. Instead he examines the fine bones of her wrist and the way her tendons knit together. In her sleep she's still stubborn. She murmurs now and again. Her body is pressed close against his and he doesn't move, even though he's too hot and the bone of her hip juts into the bottom of his ribs.

When she straddled him, she never closed her eyes. Even when her back arched and her pupils dilated, she looked at him, and he had to look back at her. Even when his thoughts guttered like a dying candle from the gusting shock of pleasure, her gaze drew his.

The glow from the streetlights sifts through the curtains and washes the room in sepia. He is sticky with sweat, exhausted. He wants to sleep, but he can't stop looking at her and the delicacy of her bones. The curve of her body is half-hidden by the sheet she pulled over the both of them. He drinks her in anyway, the shape of her body familiar enough that he can extrapolate.

He hadn't wanted things to change.

Now, with her adrift beside him in the bed (is the arm to anchor him or herself?) he is not sure how much of a change it is. She will not wake up in the morning suddenly yielding to his whim. He will not wake up in the morning suddenly passionate about parenting or prepared for a long-term, having and holding kind of relationship. But they have always been serious about each other, and each time they do this, each time they wake up together, he is a little more comforted by it. She is considerate without being melodramatic or sappy. She lets him get away with some things, but not everything, and when he slacks, she takes matters into her own hands.

She had never been afraid to push him. He had been afraid of the day when she'd stop pushing back. So he had kissed her, to see what she would do.   
She kissed him back.

He picks up her hand and she sighs but doesn't wake. She is a deep sleeper. He examines her fingers one by one and kisses the sharp joint of her thumb, the hollow of her palm. He would never be this maudlin ordinarily: they don't even kiss in daylight. They don't hug. They don't write love notes or get breathless on the phone. But tonight he is sleepless and aching as he waits for the Vicodin to kick in, and one kind of ache melts into another. This sentimentality, this tenderness as he presses his lips to the ball of her thumb and the knob of her wrist, this is just something to occupy him while he's wakeful. A gift he can give her that she will never know about. A secret to keep from her, whose business is finding out all of his secrets.

His self-appointed position as the keeper of her secrets (or the betrayer of them) was a sure thing from the moment they met. He always wondered why she put up with it. Did she foresee this? He had never promised her nights in white satin. She had never asked.

Penance, he thinks, and blinks slowly. His thoughts are getting hazy. He could get up and leave, spend the night in his own bed. He doubts she would rouse if he moved her, or be offended if she woke up alone. She takes him to heart, but she doesn't take him personally, not when it doesn't matter. They are grown and independent people with lonely habits and strong ideas of how life should be.

He knew that too, the first time he saw her. No ordinary undergrad had that determined set of chin.

Ancient history, and however he studies, he's doomed to repeat it. And he likes that. He likes this, the indecisive moment resolved by the easing of pain, the slow drift down into sleep, the knowledge that nothing's resolved but that he can stay if he wants.

He could always stay. His choice. Her choice.

He sleeps without dreaming, shallow but satisfying, his hand over her hand over his heart (the kind of accident that poetry is made of if anyone were awake to bear witness).


End file.
